The Doors of the Year

The final days of the old year and the first days of the new make a magical interlude. The big holidays, with all their obligations, expenses, and stresses, are over. The regularly scheduled life is kept at bay a few days more. You can feel the air gently shift around you as the door of the old year swings shut and the door of the new year opens.

A few photos from the interlude:

After seventeen inches of lowland rain in December, the last days of the month were clear and cold. We drove to Mt Hood to sled and explore.

In the mountains the gray jays watched us from the fir boughs and the ravens came to investigate.

The second day of the new year we drove an hour south to hike at Silver Falls State Park.

The trail into the canyon grew frosty.

The ferns and mosses were cloaked in filaments of ice.

The trail became treacherous where frozen streams crossed it, and we passed under curtains of icicles.

We found the sun again back atop the ridge in a fairy forest of Douglas fir and western hemlock.

Two or three inches of snow fell at home the next day. The birds left their footprints on the covered porch in the backyard.